It turns me on. Enough said

A reflection on our “anima and animus.“

“Cripples, Rebels and Criminals

Few of us can envision a genuine androgyne and few of us want to be androgynous. Like many potent words, androgyne has lost its true meaning. Nowadays, it suggests unisex, a mushing together of undifferentiated masculine and feminine energies so weak in themselves that they cling together to survive.

A genuine androgyne, psychologically speaking, is an archetype image in which the conscious differentiation of masculine and feminine energies is always being finely tunes. It is like a Stradivarius violin or cello, wrought to reverberate with the strength and delicacy of both energies in exquisite balance.”

Chapter 5 The Ravaged Bridegroom / Masculinity in Women by Marion Woodman

Now I try to feel it as often as I can. When I get the hard-on for life. Flowers blooming, a song, my friends all help to amplify this experience.

Jung Remarked of someone:

“At least she is trying to work on her animus and that is the most meritorious thing that anyone can do.”

~ Pg. 161 The Animus: The Sprint of Inner Truth in Women by Barbara Hannah

Love this picture my son took of me. It is that time when I united the male and female within me. Symbolized by my two tattoos of Dionysian Hollyhocks.

I was reading that Indian Gurus’ overall goal is to unite all religions of the world. They also talk about united male female gods. Which is beyond us as very external and internal archetypes that we all share consciously or unconsciously.

A character archetype in unique terms is a type of character who represents a universal pattern, and therefore appeals to our human ‘collective unconscious.’

This is extremely simplistic I know. Also, the religions of the world have tended to be very male oriented. As most cultures or all cultures for the last two thousand years.

As a religious studies major in college, BA and Masters, I always had a thorn in my side.

With in-depth Jungian Psychology I have found the answers to many of my concerns. For me it was uniting the masculine and feminine within myself, or in Jungian terms the “anima and animus.“

“Together they form a divine pair, one of whom in accordance with his Logos nature, is characterized by Pheuma and Nous rather like Hermes with his ever-shifting hues, while the other, in accordance with her Eros nature wears the gestures of Aphrodite, Helen (Selene,) Persephone and Hecate. Triple Goddess

Both of them are unconscious powers, “gods” [archetypes] in fact as in the ancient world…”

Pg. 21 AION Carl Jung

I have a “hard-on” for life. Even within the diversity of life right now. I can’t help getting one when I see flowers in bloom and the whole of nature in a type of rapture. Welcome Spring or Autumn as my favorite times of the year.

It is not the male kind of hard-on but it something inside. Not sexual but very blissful-orgasmic at times

It is ironical for me to have these feelings while also having to balance it out with my compassion for what we are all going through right now historically. I know it is a dark time, a real challenge for all of us in different ways.

I am mindful of those suffering.

They are not alone when we think upon them. I have love in my home that comforts me.

Also, the human Ego is my friend.

I think that males and females have a different relationship with their Egos.

I feel males need to let their Egos float downstream a little.

I think females should ride their Egos.

It is good to be admired as it is to admire another.

I like the feeling of appreciation as well as when I feel the feelings of the appreciation for others.

As a female riding her Ego it is like riding in a canoe.

Sometimes the river is smooth and glossy.

Other times it is a prissy fucking nightmare.

Yet we need to express our realities to the world…

as I am doing here.

My self especially as contrasted with another self or the world.

The Calendar

In memory of…

Sigrid Hudson Bishop

“Eternity interrupts. It is as if there is a plane where there is clock time and then eternity puts its hand in for a minute and you have an archetypal experience. You have a feeling of what Jung said was “the infinite” and then very often the watch reacts to that.”

~ The Palace of the Cat: The Cat Marie-Louise Von Franz.

This is a short story about a friend. I find the best friends are not the ones that you make yourself but are the ones that find you. They stand the probability of time. They happen without planning and endure without much effort. She was like that. I first met her online on Facebook. We had common friends of friends. She was also interested in music as well as William Blake and Carl Jung. She showed up at my first speaking event at Whittier College.

Later she told me about a Punk event at UCLA college that I applied to and was accepted at. She was there for me and I shared many stories and my creations with her.

I think I inspired her to go to Pacifica Graduate Institute offering degrees in the clinical psychology, counseling, mythological studies and depth psychology.

At this time last year 2018, she offered me an extra William Blake calendar. I accepted it with honor. Every day I looked at the calendar and thought of her. Happy to have such a friend. Remarkable I am taken back by the last image of the calendar of The Archangel Michael Foretelling the Crucifixion. She passed away December 2019.

I believe that crucifixion is symbolic of a person’s day of release from their physical body.

As friends, have our souls not spoken to each other?

I think so.

“They looking back, all th’ Eastern side beheld

Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,

Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate

With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes:

Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon; [ 645 ]

The World was all before them, where to choose

Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:

They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,

Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

~Book 12 Paradise Lost; Milton.

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”

~William Blake

15 years as a cowboy… if they lived.

I love watching Westerns. I have my favorite channels. All the actors that played the cowboy game through the many years is amazing. Yet in truth the American cowboy days were short. Fifteen years after the civil war through the building of the train industry and barbed wire.

The Spaniards and Mexicans were challenged by Native Indians and then the Europeans. Carelessly leaving their horses and cattle to be taken over and bred by these new propagated cowboys. It is a brutal history as well as a beautiful one as in the current film Painted Woman. A woman was a mother, whore or missionary. Nevertheless, the women are robust and hearty characters as in the film True Grit where a young girl outsmarts many a gun shooting cowboy and avenges her father’s death.

A decade and a half are a short time for towns and saloons to be alive for this massive movement of the wild days of traveling and roaming cowboys. Then barbed wire and the movement of cattle by way of the train into mass slaughterhouses. To roam the prairie was gone.

I love these films as I do Noir films. Adventure, mystery the good and the bad guys and always the femme fatale or saloon lady entertainers.

Hearts Buoyant

I see an illuminated bright  

five-pointed star 

Over the emotional ocean 

Of black and greasy-greedy oil 

The light moving upon this darkness  

Wavering leaps of sparkling exuberance.  

This star ascends  

as the current below moves  

like the waves of a darkened  

Depressed ocean.   

Shall we focus on the star  

For the exuberance is like 

A cleaning soap 

A detergent affirming justice  

The Eagle is scrubbed clean. 

I see an illuminated bright  

five-pointed star  

I hear the waves of the ocean  

Calling to break the Eagle clean.  

Returns the rhythm to the rogue waves 

I see justice there  

hearts are buoyant  

Upon that black and greasy-greedy oil 

awareness and mindfulness

The Eagle is scrubbed clean!  

My heavenly shower

  My heavenly shower is a sacred place of hot, warm or cold water.  It is there for me in worst of times bones ache and chills of fever cleaning a dark soul quality away.  I sing, talk and compose there I talk to my medicine animals there and say my prayers.  It is an old shower with a whacked head yet the water cleans me inside and out my holy shower that sings me sweet words.

Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine Number 54~10 Year Anniversary Issue Paperback Documentary (replica) Punk Rock 1977 – 1987.

Integrity is in every image, interview, editorial and advertisement.

The project of creating the first Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine # 54 Ten Year Anniversary issue is a scan of issue one through fifty. Different technology back in 1987 but our HP Laser printer in office and camera, set up in our garage, both helped in the scanned copy layout of images. Both printer and camera made this issue happen. It was Flipside Fanzine magic.

Each issue presents selected interviews and stories that zigzag together vivid accounts and insights from the punk rock scene. Although some readers have expressed nostalgia for the letter and classified sections—once vital hubs for community interaction—the publication prioritizes detailed narratives about bands of the era. This editorial choice underscores a distinctive aspect that captures the passion and intensity characteristic of punk rock. By focusing solely on musicians, their experiences, and the cultural influence they exerted, the publication seeks to give readers a deeper view of the punk movement, ensuring its legacy endures for new generations and honoring its genuine spirit of punk rock.

Our new Commodore 128 computer was a revolutionary thing at the time. I painstakingly did all the layout for the first issue. We took highlighted interviews from each issue along with editorials. I did it then and I did it again with this replica issue.

The only difference being is that the technology for this replica is a hell of a lot better. As well as the programs use to get Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine # 54 the way that it is. My dream was to come out with a paperback copy of this issue.

I adore this issue, so I preserved it.

The new cover is a picture by Al Flipside. Symbolic of how we bugged the bands and ran a punk rock fanzine together.

It was a sin from AL Flipside’s perspective to have our faces in Flipside fanzines. So, I challenged this sin with my mug on the cover. It is not so much about this. More than that it reflects a time when I was a gal amongst many guy punkers. Which was and is still a turn on for me. Very punk rock.

Subhumans (Canadian Band) and Angry Samoans. Greg Turner, Metal Mike, Wimpy, Hud, Gary and Jim.

This is one of my favorite pics of the early punk scene with…

I am holding Flipside’s tape recorder. Our # one staff … with us the whole time.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is tape-recorder.jpg

We recorded all of our band interviews included in each issue on this tape recorder.

We were always in the middle of bugging the bands. So, to me it is symbolic of us. Al and I as we ran a Fanzine. It also shows you the world through Al’s eyes. We literally had thousands and thousands of negatives and pictures in our office.

The yellow patina is gone, and the pages are all straight. This issue of Flipside # 54 was originally printed on newsprint paper, so the pages did yellow.

I put a great deal of time into making this paperback into the sweet little punk rock number that it is. Some punks have told me that this was their punk rock bible. It is Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine issues one through fifty. A lot of punk voices. The integrity of what punk was at any time during the original punk rock scene is shared here.

Flipside Fanzine # 54 captures the continuity and real experience and thoughtful wild exuberant expression of many interesting individuals. It was a passion of mine to share in this documentation of a scene. It still is which is why I continued over the years with this project to have a new handheld Flipside # 54 for anyone who wants to hold it too.

I think it is incredibly special, in a punk kind of way, I hope you will enjoy it too.

Within this paperback book is our history of the early punk rock scene. We at Flipside covered that scene thoroughly, what we wanted to cover that is. It is best you read the editorial included at the beginning of this paperback to get a real sense of who we were. Ten years of documenting a scene included in issues one through fifty is a great deal to read. A magnifying glass may be needed.

I always say the proof is in the pudding. Shit workers who worked on each issue are clearly defined in each issue. This is what I mean by proof. Always a lot of hands in the cookie jar at the Flipside house. Suffice to say I will let this spectacular punk documentary speak for itself from the giant community of punk voices. The true punk rock narrative.

I recommend my memoir My Punkalullaby as a sidekick to Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine # 54 Ten-Year Anniversary Issue (replica) 1977 to 1987 because both are my punk rock opus, and I am very proud of publishing these editions through my publishing company The Seminary of Praying Mantis Publishing.

Click on Image takes you to Amazon where this is sold.

Click on Image takes you to Amazon where this is sold.

Both issues are for purchase at Amazon with a click.

58E12F79-3500-4F71-9418-7E2A071C0622 — **The Seminary Of Praying Mantis Publishing 2019**

ARTIFACTS — Hudley Flipside

The Nasty woman is me

The Nasty Woman

“In his late works , he embodied these and other ills in the nightmare ridden figure of the cosmic giant Albion, or universal humanity, who has fallen in to deadly sleep of mundane existence. In humanity’s coma, the divine is a remote and forbidding sky-god: nature a sterile heap of atoms, lovers and family members, enemies; and one’s own innermost being, an unrecognized alien.”

~Blake’s Poetry & Designs ` A Norton Critical Edition.

Smörgåsbord of words and feelings… some very nasty…. like me.

I realize I am being confrontational, nasty, and outrageous. It is that two-week time as we move into the autumnal equinox. I hate this time of transition, but I love autumn.

Today I had to get gas on the way to where I was going. This local gas station charged me a 30 cents gas fee. Yet this is the normal way to skim the top and make a lot of money off millions of poor people. I remember when gas stations had attendants pour the gas, check the oil, and fill the car tires. It was service with a smile.

I wish one of these monster gas companies would be brave and bring the service attendants back. They could collect the cash and we could give them the service charge… instead of a fucking machine.

Every time we take away a person’s job and replace them with a machine, we become less human.

I went into the mini-market and the cashier, who seemed to be acting as an employee, knew nothing about the fee and said,

“I don’t know why you are asking about it. You are the only one that cares? No one else has asked about it.”

I looked at her silently and squarely.

“You should know about it and all the things around you here. I must pay a fee and it is dirty filthy outside around the gas tanks. I remember the day…”

A man came forward and interrupted our conversation and the cashier looked away.

“Excuse us,” I said.

“We are talking.”

I used a finger to point to the cashier and me.

“Grumble,” said the man under his breath.

I left, telling the cashier she should lose her job for not knowing anything.

Then I came home to find standing outside my home a strange older man smoking a cigarette.

“Are you waiting for someone,” I said.

“No.”

“Then why did you park here?”

The street had no other cars around. He then looked up at the tree. I then asked him to please move his car I needed to park our truck there. He seemed nice enough for not having a reason for being there besides smoking a cigarette. We talked back and forth.

“We have had issues with drug dealers around here.”

He soon left and I moved the truck out. I know I was being ridiculous. I thought it strange that he would get out of his car with his cell phone in hand to smoke a cigarette under our lovely olive tree. I did say to him.

“I don’t like the smell of cigarettes and I am sure the tree doesn’t either.”

I think upon a poem I wrote.

Any time of the year but now it is moving into the Autumn poem.

Green-gold olives

This eve

I take my broom

Last ray of sun is dead here

…it is real…

The shy clouds hide stars

Only the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn shine their breast plates.

Of radiant light…

I take my broom to the front of our home

into the dustpan goes

Dry brown and yellow

Pointy olive leaves and hard green-gold olives…

Into the waste bin…

away away.

Goes all the thoughts of this day

Of a wooing Crone…

Looking around as I sweep and bend

For any Fay to show their haunting ways

In the clouds sailing on the night or

Upon the grasping arms of the olive tree.

Queen of Elphame mocks me

As I move quickly and consistently,

I call her Sabrina…

How symbolic have I become?

Wild movement… yet strangely calm.

Sweet sweat dripping

My dusty perfume…

I do as many an old Crone

Sweeping clean the front of their home

At this transforming time.

Today I am a nasty one..

Now Our Civil War

“Thus, it is our fate to manage within our nature the complexity and the competition of two opposing tendencies: that which stands with life and love (the Dionysian) and that which is greedy, power hungry, and ego-driven (the Titanic).”

~Aguilar, A. Marina. Alchemy of The Heart: The Sacred Marriage of Dionysus & Ariadne. Chiron Publications. Kindle Edition.

Civil War ~A war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country.

Hiawatha, Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln are examples of sensible leaders of humanity and bright governance. Which we lack now, and profoundly so. I must say that we are now in the mists of a civil war. Has anyone called it out yet? I will. At times like these I rest on the wisdom of leaders who are just and wise. A call to their spirit of wisdom is needed.

Will we stand aside and be enablers of this abuse on “we the people,” children, emigrants and the innocent? How can we do this? It is time to see this for what it is. A civil war.

Hiawatha

“As the smoke from many family fires rises tonight and spreads above the forest, let us remember,” he reminded the Iroquois, “that this smoke comes from many fires, and no one fire is better than another. Though one fire may burn brighter and another more faintly who is to say which is wiser? You know as well as I that there are times and seasons for both. Remember always that the truth springs from many hearts and takes many outer forms, no two ever the same. One in the Great Spirit, we shall have no one ruling shamans, for such traditions are warrior traditions and not the traditions of the Ongwhehonwhe. Let such customs be buried with our weapons. Let them lie forgotten beside the tree that is no more.”

~Hiawatha – Return Of The Bird Tribes.

Thomas Paine

“Can we possibly suppose that if governments had originated in a right principle, and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, the world could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen it? What inducement has the farmer, while following the plough, to lay aside his peaceful pursuit, and go to war with the farmer of another country? or what inducement has the manufacturer? What is dominion to them, or to any class of men in a nation? Does it add an acre to any man’s estate, or raise its value? Are not conquest and defeat each of the same price, and taxes the never-failing consequence? Though this reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government. War is the Pharo-table of governments, and nations the dupes of the game.”

~ pg. 178 Chapter II, Of the Origin of the Present Old Governments. ~ Thomas Paine

Abraham Lincoln

“That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

July 31st and the Jolly Rogers

Dad was a WWII Captain Pilot stationed in Australia. He flew a B-24. He flew with the Jolly Rogers Bomb Squad. He was shot down off the shore of New Guinea. His back was broken. He survived of course. July 31^st 1945 is the day it happened. When I was a kid mom made up a cake with the shoreline of New Guinea with a B-24 on it. We always celebrated this day.

I did not realize until this morning that it was his special day. I have not celebrated it for a long time. Maybe dad is looking down and wants a little remembrance. I thank him for the life he gave me. He taught me endurance, strength with a little coyote in there.

Rest in Peace and have a beer on me.

Dad is on the left nearest the Bimbo figure.

The film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) brings up what my dad and mom went through. It is a film about their generation. Dana Andrews as Captain Fred Derry reminds me of my dad. Especially his struggles in life and with drinking.

Dad was one of the fallen angels. I love watching this film because it helps me to understand and feel close to him. He was a real character who was often hard to be with. I love him dearly and miss his stories.

Dad is holding a cigarette and mom is across from him.

Time of Coyote

As we move into the Summer Solstice I celebrate the “Time of Coyote!”

We have been beginning to walk in the Santa Monica Mountains again.

I was not feeling well enough but my two sons went for a walk today.

Guess who popped out of the wild to show up?

Coyote.

Youngest son said Coyote had a big grin with tongue hanging out and then leaped away.

Coyotes are magical animals who only let you see them if they want to!

I know Coyote knows me, and also knows my two sons, because Coyote showed up in the wild to say hello!

What an awesome delight that is to know!

https://www.pinterest.com/explore/coyote-tattoo/

Driving towards home the dark night held all the romance that a woman could ask for. Falling in love after 30 was not a goal. Looking out of the passenger seat coyote was eyeballing my lover. He looked back at the wild thing that was part of a mythology deep in this hill’s subconscious. Hadn’t he been on top of coyote hill and tasted the nectar of adventure? Once on top years earlier coyote turned to look as coyote defined his territory. A wild thing knowing all those living there. A sacred path that went on for generations.

Posts about Coyote

Coyote Hill

Coyote Green Stone Story

Yellow Behind the Ears…

Coyote

Never ever, no way, give up again!

A Letter to Bernie Taupin, Alfred E. Newman and Gahan Wilson.

Al Jaffee, King of the Mad Magazine Fold-In, Dies at 102

“Allan Jaffee (born Abraham Jaffee; March 13, 1921 – April 10, 2023) was an American cartoonist. He was notable for his work in the satirical magazine Mad, including his trademark feature, the Mad Fold-in. Jaffee was a regular contributor to the magazine for 65 years and is its longest-running contributor. In a 2010 interview, Jaffee said, “Serious people my age are dead.”

~Mechanic, Michael (September 24, 2010). “Cartoonist Al Jaffee, the Original Mad Man”. Mother Jones. Retrieved October 10, 2012.

These are the Benadryl days.

Dear Teachers,

Too much listening to Elton John and remembering my crush on Bernie Taupin. Foggy dreams. Dreams where the threads of remembering can’t be pulled down into this world.

A changing mixture of memories swirling around me that I have experienced in real time. Remembering my, heart heart ~fun fun, days as a youth and teenager.

As sitting under the pool table in the boy’s room reading Mad Magazine and Playboy. Alfred E. Neuman or cartoonist Gahan Wilson, Allan Jaffee or Jack Davis went on to inspire me in my own fanzine days.

Where I created images or doodled between the pages.

Magazines are now becoming obsolete. Newspapers stands too except for the billionaires that do resurrect some.

A fight that is not going to win.

To my teachers that came from those awesome perverted magazines.

Love,

Hudley Flipside aka Holly

Jack Davis Mad Magazine original!

Within our Nature

Thus it is our fate to manage within our nature the complexity and the competition of two opposing tendencies: that which stands with life and love (the Dionysian) and that which is greedy, power hungry, and ego-driven (the Titanic).

Aguilar, A. Marina. Alchemy of The Heart: The Sacred Marriage of Dionysos & Ariadne . Chiron Publications. Kindle Edition.

The Grecian god Dionysius sat enthroned on a leopard.

Wild thing

Wildflowers have taught me to be authentic. You cannot mess with a wildflower. It does its own thing. Too much water or love and if will die. One must look at a wildflower with a sideways glance. Appreciation is appreciated. Don’t expect a sweetness without an inward determination or discernment from the wild thing.

Euphrosyne is a Goddess of Good Cheer, Joy and Mirth. Her name is the female version of a Greek word euphrosynos, which means “merriment”. The Greek poet Pindar states that these goddesses were created to fill the world with pleasant moments and good will. Usually the Charites attended the goddess of beauty Aphrodite.

Today while shopping the Sunday crowds were noticeable. The checkout lane was accepted. Yet even with the self-checkout open and the fifteen items or less open, two young men with several Styrofoam cups wanted to go first. They loomed close to me. Thinking my old woman ways would be forgiving and stupid to the fact they would eventually ask the question.

And then it happened the young man said,

“Can you do us a favor…”

I said with well learned flower intention and assertion,

“No. There is a self-checkout over there and a fifteen or less over there. Otherwise, you need to chill and wait like the rest of us.”

I went ahead with the checkout process. These two young men then decided to enter my space. I had to tell them to please step back.

“You need to step back because you are invading my space.”

They were in front of the cash check machine. I had to bag my things. They were shaking their heads like I was playing the wrong card.

You cannot expect older mamas to be sweetie pie by force. If these two young men were older and needed my help, I would have let them through and bagged for them. But these guys thought wrong about me.

It felt good to say “no” and “back off.”

I did not use fuck, or stupid or use my hand finger. I was assertive and authentic like the wildflowers in my garden.

Mindfulness and Raven

“… but rather that it is the intangible things that imprint on us and we imprint on others that are most important… allow that magic to spread to your soul and enlighten you spiritually.”

~ Bear Medicine Walker / omtimes.com

RAVEN MEDICINE

Raven Medicine https://www.pinterest.com/whytte/dream-catchers-mandalas-shields-medicine-wheels-fe/

Often our lessons in life come through illness. We all go through these experiences. As well as our ancestors, loved ones and friends have. My illness has taught me the mindfulness of others who have gone through similar experiences. A family member or a friend that went through illness and died. Wasn’t it Madam Blavatsky who said,

“We have neither friends nor enemies only teachers?”

An illness may be only a physiological illness, but I am experiencing mine more. My illness is in my heart. It is in my lungs and esophagus. The area of our hearts and lungs are what connect us to our friends, family, and ancestors.

As practicing mindfulness, it is helping me to see that all relationships are what Madam Blavatsky taught. Also, that we all have a dark and light side.

Today I am authoring an essay about two people who were, and still are, a big part of my life. I experienced their dark side and light side. Their joy and sadness are with me.

I am hoping that this Tibetan Buddhism subtle mindfulness will help my two relationships that have passed on. In return, helping me to let go of resentments and promote healing. As Raven from the Native American Medicine Wheel teaches,

“Be strong, have faith and remember within all things are lessons and positives.”

Today my mindfulness is focused on two relationships, my longtime girlfriend Lynn, and my oldest brother Steven Jarvis. Both were independent, shy, and creative people. They both had an addiction. Lynn died of an overdose before she turned fifty.

Steven Jarvis was an alcoholic, and I was not close to him when he died so I do not know what illness killed him in his early seventies.

I am sad they are gone.

Now for the good part of this story. They both caused me pain, stress, and unhappiness. They also brought me so much fun, joy, and love. This also is a mindfulness of how they experienced me in life.

Lynn and I grew up playing as a profession. We were wild as the wind. Later in life she drove me and some other friends to high school every day. She had a little brown VW Bug. She always had a tape of Crosby Stills, Nash and Young on her cassette car radio.

Steven Jarvis was my brother who I looked up to as a kid. He was 11 years older than I was. I painfully watched as he left our home at 18. He was a movie extra for years. He was a lady’s man and sailed on his own sailboat to Hawaii.

He was a licensed scuba diving instructor. He took me sailing and I sat on the front tip or the ‘stuck.’

Flying on the waves as a seagull. He had a Ford Falcon that he raced when he was younger. I learned about the Beatles listening to his 8-track tape of Rubber Soul while he worked on the engine with his cute friends. That is it…. mindfulness…

vast…

“Although we are typically in the habit of perceiving our world in terms of solid shapes and forms, Taoism teaches that we can train ourselves to perceive in other ways, and a good place to start is with our own human body. Though we may now experience our body as being rather solid, at a molecular level it is comprised mostly of water–a very fluid substance! And at an atomic level, it is 99.99% space–a vast (and infinitely intelligent) emptiness.” Online source …

a niche for the conscious feminine

“But now women need to create structures in their lives and in society which ensure a niche for the conscious feminine. It is time to explode the fallacy that men and women are the same. Being equal does not mean having to be similar. Perhaps the time has come when we can afford to be different yet equal.”

–Rescuing the Feminine. The problems of the Animus in Women by Jasbinder Garnermann.

Three little…

I have three books
before me
The Three Little Pigs,
The Three Little Kittens,
The Three Bears.
How many times did I read the books
to my two sons as babies?

I may come out with a little book
called The Three Little Praying Mantis.

Jaded Poem

A little around the edges

A spinning energy in my middle

Older and wiser and stronger

Less inspired by adolescent rantings!

So I want to write and read aloud

I want to travel and ponder the meaning of life.

HEADLESS HORSEMAN ROAD

Letter To: Councilmember District 3 Bob Blumenfield, 200 N Spring St. Los Angeles, CA 90012

“I was born in Encino. I grew up in Woodland Hills. I have watched as the big ugly apartments have taken over the San Fernando Valley. I find it so refreshing to hear “large scale apartments should not be wedged in-between single-family homes by right.”

I have a campaign that focuses on this. I have enclosed a copy. I hope you will support my fight. These big ugly apartments use too much energy and create too much traffic.

We need to support the people living here now. More libraries, more high schools, more DMVs. More social services.

I also am sharing my book “To Ride a Painted Pony Wild.” I share my youth riding the hills of Woodland Hills. I shared a story about when Canoga Ave. was a two-lane street. Near Ventura Blvd was a stable which housed a lovely red barn, whereas young girls marveled at the horse tack and leather saddles going back generations. Even Horse Buggy Parts and all the tools to care for horses.

I drove down Canoga Ave the other day. It was a shock to me to see all the apartments going up. Right next to the freeway. All the eucalyptus and pepper trees cut down. Do you remember when it was a lazy two-lane highway?”

The 1970s, The San Fernando Valley and The Santa Monica Mountains

Horses and their girls….

During a tumultuous era marked by global unrest and climate change, I recall a hopeful time shaped by nature, integrity, and innocence. Elton John’s music and Bernie Taupin’s lyrics amplified these experiences. My autobiographical novella, set in the San Fernando Valley and nearby California counties, follows three years of friendship and horseback riding through the Santa Monica Mountains. The story offers a journey into the female psyche and evokes memories of an untamed Valley, with “Madman Across the Water” and “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player” providing the soundtrack as my friends and I sang Bernie Taupin’s lyrics during our rides.

Excerpt from beginning of Chapter Three.

3. HEADLESS HORSEMAN ROAD

A song we were singing ~ All the Nasties – By Elton John, Lyrics by Bernie Taupin

Canoga Avenue from Mulholland to Oxnard was overwhelmingly wild in the 1970s. It was only a two-lane avenue lined with some residential homes, farms, and empty fields. The enormous eucalyptus trees monstered along Canoga Avenue exalting the heart of Woodland Hills. We chased wild rabbits bareback where the city of Warner Center now suffocates the land.

Stealing pumpkins late at night from the many pumpkin patches was a scary treat for us kids around autumn. Now Kaiser Permanente stands tall over ghostly pumpkins which linger there only in my mind.

Ruff and I rode our horses after school which did not give us much time. We had to make it back home around dusk. This gave us a couple of hours to ride. We had it in our minds to visit down an old dirt road up near Canoga Ave., moving south towards Mulholland. We noticed this dirt road a few times on our rides up to Mulholland where it seemed endless trails awaited us, but now was not the time.

The dirt road branched off to the east and seemed a long one. The everyday valley trees mixed and mingled along the road with large rough trunks and heavy-handed branches. A small forest. We got off our horses to look around.

Click on Image to Order…

Flipside Fanzine # 2, tight scene of nobodies going nowhere?

Your patina is showing…. before I edited and cleaned up the issue for printing…..

My ‘initiation woman’ who abducted me into the punk scene was Donna Rhia but she no longer was playing drums with the Germs. I am not going to amplify the loss of Lorna Doom because there is enough on social media already.

I guess she was a part of the tight scene of nobodies going nowhere but lost and having fun. It was so exciting back then which is what keeps me going on the subject…

Courtesy of Hudley Loss Angeles Flipside Fanzine number two. (1978)